My journey to mining bitcoin from electricity created by the sun began last year on a mountain in Tennessee. At the time, my family was living off grid, exploring what it was like to take a step out of the regularly scheduled societal program and into a life of greater connection to the natural world and the people around us. We were living well with the sun as our source of electricity. So well, in fact, that there were many days that our batteries were topped off well before noon, which meant that our solar panels were capable of harvesting much more energy than we needed. I’d been hearing that bitcoin miners are really good at soaking up and monetizing excess energy, so I took a look at our system’s capacity and the miner options available. I discovered that Bitmain’s S9 miner was plug and play ready for my application, and it only cost $125. It was perfect as a low risk way to learn more about home mining and an easy way to test what it was like to mine on solar. I started plugging in the miner on sunny days after the batteries had reached full charge and it worked! I was turning the extra solar capacity into hard money. I was hooked and began dreaming of ways to optimize the system. Before long, I discovered an online community of home miners who were tinkering with all sorts of interesting ways to use miners to add value to their lives. In particular, I was intrigued by the work of Dirtyshotya from 100acresranch, who builds a tuner that allows a modified S19 series miner to run on 12v dc current straight from solar panels. This increases efficiency by eliminating the AC-DC power supply miners require when running from AC power sources. I purchased a tuner box from Dirty in November and began assembling the necessary components to build a completely off-grid solar mine. This week marked the maiden voyage of the system. As with any project that pushes the boundaries of what has previously been done, the road has been bumpy and winding. What follows is my attempt to get into writing the process, challenges, and successes of this project, both as a reference for future me and as inspiration and information to anyone who is curious about mining bitcoin with solar.
Before embarking on this project, I identified the following goals:
- To invest capital in energy independence and resilience.
- To expand my experiential capital in both solar systems and bitcoin mining.
- To setup a relatively passive income stream that reduces the ROI of the solar system.
- To harvest the heat from the miner to supplement home space heating.
I don’t currently live in a home that I’m able to add a solar system to, so I had to get creative. Fortunately, I found a family member who was willing to host the system in exchange for the supplemental heat from the miner. I have designed it so we can move it when we move to property where we have more space. The system is an asset that should bear fruit for decades.
The system is composed of the following components:
- Solar panels. Due to the design, 12v panels are necessary for maximum utilization of electricity produced. Technically, higher voltage panels will work, but they will be limited to a fraction of their maximum output because the miner requires 12v supply. 12v panels are more difficult to find. I got mine on eBay. I started with 3 Kw of capacity, which is around the maximum draw of my miner. This doesn’t mean the panels will produce 3 kW. We’ll get to that in a bit.
- Miner. Currently the firmware for the tuner supports Bitmain’s S19 series miners. I went with a j Pro 100Th machine.
- Solar tuner box. This is where the magic happens, adjusting the power sent to the miner based on what’s available from the panels and batteries.
- Batteries. 400ah of 12v lithium.
- Racking. I spent a lot of time putting together racking that was as cost effective as possible while meeting aesthetic and functional needs.
- Wiring, fuses, breakers, connectors. Due to the length of my runs, this required upsizing my wire.
Challenges in setting up the system:
- Panel placement. The roof I have access to faces east/west. This is not ideal. After careful consideration, I decided to place panels on each slope of the roof. My hope was to capture more hours of sun rather than focussing on peak power production. The jury is still out on whether this was a good idea.
- Wire run. Low voltage systems do best with short wire runs because of the expense of running wire gauges that are large enough to safely carry the amps the panels produce. The constraints of my system required wire runs of up to 45ft., which meant I had to upsize my wire gauge. This was expensive.
- Setting up the tuner box. This was mostly due to my limited technical knowledge. I was learning how to setup and operate a solar system, a bitcoin miner, and the tuner all at the same time. There’s a learning curve. I spent a couple of days foiled by a bad sd card. Slow and steady wins the race.
After running the system for a few days, some things are becoming apparent:
- The solar panels seem to be the limiting factor right now. In full sun they harvest around 750w, which is 25% of their rated maximum. My current hypothesis is that panel placement is largely to blame. The panels are flat on the roof, facing east and west. I knew this wasn’t ideal, but it seems to be even less so than I hoped. The next step is to try tilting the panels south as much as I can. Production should improve as we enter the summer months and the earth’s axis shifts to bring the sun higher in the sky, striking the panels more directly. I will need to make improvements if I expect to hash over the winter. There is enough space on current racking to add another panel or two, so that is another option for adding watts.
- Current battery capacity will only extend runtime marginally. It works well if the sun is momentarily obstructed by clouds, but if I want extended runtimes when the sun is down I’ll need to add batteries.
- Turning extra electricity into heat and BTC is fun! I see lots of potential to keep tweaking the system for maximum efficiency.
Questions? Ask away. Comments? Send’em over.
A new type of pillow that you fill with 40 lbs of water so it actually stays cold all night. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://coldbed.com
Do you ever feel like you don't have enough balls to do something? Well get 2048 numbered, 6.35mm chrome steel ball bearings in a bottle so you can grab your seed phrase by the balls. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://21baller.com
Blue blocking glasses that actually block out all the blue and green light, to wear an hour or two before bed. You won't know how you lived without them. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://carbonshade.com
A light for your desk that hits your face with the correct, sky blue cyan wavelength, not a fake thing that can trick your eye into seeing that color. "Bright" inside is 1000 lux, sunny is 100,000 lux, but also, lux is a lie. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://getchroma.co/product/blue-white-sky-portal-480nm-blue-hifi-white/
Scary high power density near infrared light. Orthopedic surgeons might hate me if more people used these. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://getchroma.co/product/chroma-ironforge/
The first ever and only consumer UVB LED with precise spectral output control, unlike fluorescent bulbs. More vitamin D with less DNA damage. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://getchroma.co/product/chroma-d-light/
A vaginal red light therapy device, which may help with strength, fertility, and pleasure. An excellent troll for the fake hardtech VCs / performance art, made even better by the fact that it actually work. Bitcoin fixed that.
https://aurorawand.com
Each of these stores has varying levels of discounts (except 21baller, which is btc only) that automatically show-up during checkout when you go the bitcoin route, and lightning is accepted.
DISCLOSURE: these are all mine, but then again, when you buy from me, you accelerate the foundational capabilities of human civilization in advanced materials manufacturing & aerospace, so pretty good deal all things considered.
Learn more about my path developing these products and the design philosophy that I document in a newsletter:
https://chroma.substack.com
Started learning HTML basics on my journey into front end.
Buying some cheap sats as well
I buy Zeihan's broad macro thesis.
However, his specific local political analysis is tissue paper thin -- his comments on the local politics of the country I live were wildly poorly reasoned and didn't seem based on any primary sources.
America can falter on the world stage, particularly in its ability to project and maintain global power. All empires end up over stretched and unable to flex on all fronts, we see this right now with the US struggling to maintain arms shipments to Ukraine at the same time as mobilise forces in the Red Sea. If China were to make a move on Taiwan the US would be unable to support them.
But domestically it will always have the abundance of resources and population base to thrive.
It's great. Now we just need the rewards to be tweaked to incentivize zapping that older stuff. Almost there.
https://m.stacker.news/24686
From the official transcript:
MR JUSTICE MELLOR: Thank you.
Well, I thank all the parties for their written
closing and oral arguments, and they've been very
helpful indeed. They will require me to prepare
a fairly lengthy written judgment, which will be handed
down in due course. And for all those who have already
been hassling my clerk as to when the judgment will be
ready, the short answer is as follows: it will be ready
when it's ready and not before.
However, having considered all the evidence and
submissions presented to me in this trial, I've reached
the conclusion that the evidence is overwhelming.
Therefore, for the reasons which will be explained in
that written judgment in due course, I will make certain
declarations which I am satisfied are useful and are
necessary to do justice between the parties.
First, that Dr Wright is not the author of
the Bitcoin White Paper.
Second, Dr Wright is not the person who adopted or
operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in
the period 2008 to 2011.
Third, Dr Wright is not the person who created
the Bitcoin System.
And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial
versions of the Bitcoin software.
Any further relief will be dealt with in my written
judgment. I will extend time for filing any appellant's
notice until 21 days after the form of order hearing,
which will be appointed following the hand down of my
written judgment and I ask the parties to seek to agree
an order giving effect to what I have just stated.
So I'm afraid, for any further information, you'll
to wait for the written judgment.
author sounds like a cool guy
Hi stackers! The FAQ at https://sigbash.com and the thread here pretty much cover all the details: https://twitter.com/arbedout/status/1772646219317174680
TL,DR:
If you'd like to kick the tires, use checkout code BETATEST to get a free xpub and fire away :)
--arbedout
It’s my wife’s birthday this week so I’m working on being a slave. 😅
Otherwise it’s a general SN sprint. So I’ll be incorporating feedback on subs and doing other “minor” enhancements.
Working on a basic react page that talks to a lightning node via the LN GRPC node package. while doing this, learned about Polar and Docker. Exciting stuff!!
This is me patiently waiting for the SN Justice League to arrive!
https://imgprxy.stacker.news/1UVFIy5WswErKfCOtoVi50PSAPSc2SN7sPo8IIHBQpk/rs:fit:600:500:0/g:no/aHR0cHM6Ly9nY2RuYi5wYnJkLmNvL2ltYWdlcy9abHBPa1NtRG1zNWcuZ2lmP289MQ
Apparently nail clippers. I have a set of nail clippers that have been around for 40 years, passed down in the family. Not exactly passed down but it sounds funnier that way. I think I "stole" them from my mom along with a bunch of other stuff I needed when I moved out of my childhood home.
But these things are great. Made in South Korea. Still work perfectly and much better that any crappy Chinese made set my wife has purchased.
ps-(The term stole in this case refers to an early 20 something kid (yes still a kid) saying to mom- I am moving out and I need this, this and this, and mom of course saying, take whatever you need honey- aren't moms the best?)
I used to zap 21sats, then 50.
I think I've found a nice balance with 101sats. Every day my SN stack goes down a little until I get a comment or post that brings it back up.
1k is amazing when you're on the receiving end. If I were to bring it up to that level I think I'd be thinking about it too much. Does this post REALLY deserve this many sats?
That many people in African countries put all of their savings into a scam although they KNOW it's a scam. The just believe or hope to be one of the lucky first 10% who'll get a pay out.
Mutiny wallet is the first, they say, self costo dial Lightning wallet that is run right out of a browser. This is a big deal because now everyone can have access to a con custodial LN wallet without the need for iOS or other walled garden operating systems to use.
Be careful though: they have warned that it’s in open beta and bugs are still being reported. Seems like a great tool for those who may need it most.
Even today you can still use their “old” website. I’m really surprised they haven’t killed it yet since they effectively killed third party apps with their API pricing changes.
send hex or base64 transaction to
+1 (863) BIT-COINmore info: https://rusnak.io/how-to-send-bitcoin-transactions-via-sms/
You forgot your meme. This is like the perfect post for it lol
https://i.postimg.cc/sXmH6BvR/vader-power-dark-side.jpg
Ecash mints are useful for their privacy properties and the fact that they don't require a consensus change. They will still need to use geographical arbitrage or network privacy techniques such as tor to remain operational in the face of state sponsored attacks. This is still an easier path than achieving consensus on a soft fork. My ecash bullishness remains unperturbed.
One of the frustrating aspects of discussing these options is the constant attempts to play different solutions off of each other. We don't need to focus on a single solution. We can try all solutions at once. Please stop implying that all scaling solutions are rival. They are nonrival.
Getting close on the next release of wallet, cursing the existence of Apple products the whole way.
https://m.stacker.news/12759
So I’m out on my run today and a car zips past me and license plate says Satoshi! He lives!
Cool new logo and two classic posts of course.
It's becoming clear that NYT writers such as this are increasingly speaking to a smaller and smaller bubble that includes only themselves.
By defining a morality that sees progress only in terms of career and material success, they have ignored biological and social realities that have shaped human relationships for millennia. They have cut an entire realm of human psychology--love, family, community, responsibility, sacrifice--out of their moral framework. As such, they have made themselves increasingly irrelevant.
I am glad that women have made strides in terms of what they are and aren't able to do in the workplace, but rather than count their wins and broaden their perspective, the modern feminists continue to harp on issues that many have long since moved on from.
It's clear as day from the election results and from the direction of social media that people are getting tired of their moral framework and are looking for something fresh, something that speaks more deeply into all areas of the human psyche.
Inevitably when I revisit old code it's nothing but cringe as I see all the mistakes I made.
The only plus side is it helps convince me I've actually improved over the years and it hasn't all been in vain
On my to do an outpatient visit in Dallas for a clinical trial.
I've been a lab rat for pharmaceutical companies since 2011. I do this for a living. AMA! 😆
My issue with neuralink isn't the tech. Its the vulnerability of having a chip in the body. We need to increase value of open source auditable code. No way I'd drive a car or insert tech into my body controlled by Elon's companies. I don't have that much trust.
Most people I know that freak out about biotech like this are addicted to their phones and are being tracked 24/7. They are just freaked out about the device moving into their body. They don't realize that they have already augmented their bodies but it is just an external device.
I'll keep my tech external unless making it internal (heart for example) saves my life. The external tech I can easily replace or dispose of myself. That's my issue with biotech. How do I control it and how could it control me. I can throw my phone in the trash.
How it works:
Mostly it gives you the basic info about a transaction and buttons for eliminating "decoy senders" whom you are mostly expected to identify using off chain data. I have a way to manually identify ringsig members as decoys but I haven't automated it yet. What I want to do is use known "view keys" to identify decoys, because if you have the view key you know the "true" tx in which you spent your own coin, so if you've been used as a decoy you can automatically filter that out.
Right now it also has two automated heuristics: merge analysis and recency bias. If you received coins in two very close blocks and then spend them together, your ring, which should contain keys from semi-random blocks, will have two suspiciously close blocks where you held both inputs. So you can identify those as the real spender's coins.
Recency bias takes advantage of the fact that most decoy selection algorithms are biased toward selecting keys from recently created utxos (on the principle that actively circulating coins are more likely to be spent than old ones). When you have a group of "new coin" decoys, coins that are significantly older stick out like a sore thumb, and you can plausibly identify them as the real spender's coins.
Other metrics I want to add include bot detection (which is based on identifying txs with many outputs, since these tend to be created by automated software rather than a real person) and taint tree analysis (which creates trees of possible senders fanning out backward in time from a known destination). I also think I can fingerprint wallets by their coin selection algorithm and then identify change when it shows up in a tx that uses the same algorithm.
One thing I learned while making this is that tracing monero is possible but it seems to take a considerable amount of manual work, a large set of off chain data about addresses that you know the view keys for, and regularly creating xmr transactions yourself so that you can identify your outputs as decoys when they show up in other people's transactions
My two automated heuristics right now only identify the sender in about 1 in 15 cases, so most of the time when looking at a transaction all you see is a tool for manually filtering out decoys on your own, which is still useful, but more automation is desirable
I hope to add about four more automated heuristics but I still think you'll need a considerable amount of off chain data entry to get really good data
With a thread on X? A lot of people will not be able to read it! You should be aware of that as an independent bitcoin only journalist...